Kentucky Governor Blames Zombies for Mass Shootings in America

Rolling Stone — Peter Wade

Kentucky Republican Governor Matt Bevin has a unique take on the topic of mass shootings in America. Lack of gun regulations are not to blame, the problem is… zombies?

Bevin told conservative radio talk show host Leland Conway this week that American culture rewards and celebrates death and that the brain-eating monsters are invading the minds of our country’s youth, the Louisville Courier Journalreported.

“What’s the most popular topic that seems to be in every cable television network? Television shows are all about, what? Zombies! I don’t get it … that’s what we are,” Bevin said.

Zombies are, of course, a problem according to Bevin, but let’s not forget abortion: “When a culture is surrounded by, inundated by, rewards things that celebrate death, whether it is zombies in television shows, the number of abortions… there’s a thousand justifications for why we do this.”

Unhappy with Bevin’s accusation, Tony Moore, one of the creators of The Walking Dead comic books and the internationally broadcasted television show, penned an op-ed in the Louisville Courier Journal responding to the governor’s remarks. “Bevin’s words paint fandom as a degenerate sensibility, when I have only ever known kindness and generosity from them.”

Moore, a Kentucky native, pulled no punches, attacking Bevin for encouraging violence during the 2016 campaign. “This attack comes from the same Gov. Bevin who howled that modern American conservatism may need to be protected with actual bloodshed… Implying that under a liberal administration, it could be a likely necessity for a new civil war, a literal armed insurrection murdering Americans, to protect his political ideology.”

“Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview. ‘Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive, that we’d ever be able to recover as a nation?’ And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood of who? The tyrants, to be sure, but who else? The patriots.”

“Whose blood will be shed?” he continued, “It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.”

So death is OK with Bevin — even if he has to sacrifice his own children — as long as it’s in service of his conservative ideals. But once we put zombies on television, that is a bridge too far.